


A Bridge of Magpies

by junkshopdisco



Category: Skam - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Angst, Bipolar Disorder, F/M, M/M, Mental Illness, Suicidal Thoughts, discussion of suicide, evakteket
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-12
Updated: 2017-09-12
Packaged: 2018-12-27 05:55:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12074868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/junkshopdisco/pseuds/junkshopdisco
Summary: Even used to have an enviable life at Hogwarts - he was top of the class at Charms, had a group of friends, a girlfriend on the quidditch team, and a future. Now, he doesn't even have the emotional stability to perform certain spells.One night, he takes his troubles to the top of the Astronomy Tower, where he meets Isak and finds what he's been looking for: himself.Written for theEvakteket challenge, with the prompts Eva/Noora (get together), Eskild (lit/film), 1 (smoking up).





	A Bridge of Magpies

**Author's Note:**

> During this Even is a seventh year, Isak a sixth year, so they're 18 and 17 respectively. 
> 
> The fic deals with Even's mental illness pretty much as it is on the show, only set in a verse where there's no word for or understanding of bipolar disorder and little about other mental health conditions. Language used to talk about mental illness is taken from the Potterverse, so cw for some ableist terms. If you want to know more before reading, come ask me on [Tumblr](http://junkshop-disco.tumblr.com) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/junkshopdisco).

 

* 　 　　 　 ✫ 　 · 　　 ˚ 　　 ˚ 　　 　 . · ✵ 　　 ·　 . 　　　　　 ⋆ ✵ . . ✺ ˚ 　. · 　 　 . 　 .  ✫ 　 · 　　 ˚ 　　 ˚ 　　 　 . · ✵ 　　 ·　 .               * 　

 

Even bounces the ball off the parapet and catches it. He squeezes it just to measure the reality of its curve before he tosses it again. It ricochets off the stone, rebounds at a shallow angle, and skids on the floor, not stopping, just robbed of enough of its momentum to spin like a planet, blurring on its axis rather than bouncing. 

It stops turning eventually and tips into a crack in the floor.

Maybe it’s a sign of foreboding.

The healer’s in his head again, telling him it’s a metaphor. How easy it would be to get stuck. How easy it is to send yourself spinning through time and space. How easy it is to run out of steam when you crash back down.

Maybe it’s trying to remind him to do some fucking work.

He _acccio_ s the ball towards him, rolls it between his fingertips before he tucks it into his pocket. He pulls his telescope towards him. He lines it up with where he thinks Jupiter should be, but if it’s there, it’s hiding behind the clouds. He sighs in frustration.

Jupiter is his least favourite planet. Always has been.

  

 ·　 .  ✫  ·　.

 

Mikael and his friends are sitting in the corner. They don’t talk to him anymore, don’t laugh and glance over in warning either, but they all stiffen when Even walks into the common room. He pretends he doesn’t see them, goes over to the bookcase where Sonja is cradling a book while she looks for another one. He kisses the back of her neck in greeting. She leans against him with a smile.

“Arithmancy,” she says, and hands him the volume she’s picked out for him. “You need to catch up.”

He does. And he tries, but he only took it because she thought it was a good idea. The numbers mean far less even than they used to. He stares at them for an hour just in case some part of his brain remembers why this is important.

“It’ll get easier,” Sonja says, and squeezes his leg under the table.

He doesn’t think it will. He smiles, anyway.

The common room drains of people, but she stays with him until they’re the only two left.

At the close of the dormitory door, she looks over. She takes his book out of his hands, conjures him a bookmark so he won’t lose his place, and tucks it neatly inside before she sinks to her knees.

He pushes his fingers into her hair and imagines she’s someone else. Not someone specific, but someone with a harsh jawline who hasn’t known him since his voice was still breaking and wants nothing more than Even in his mouth. The shorter her hair is, the easier the delusion, and he lets the daydream wrap him up in all its poison.

Later, he’ll bury his guilt and his face between her legs. He’ll tell himself if he can make her bite her wrist to smother the sound of his name, what he’s thinking doesn’t count.

 

 ·　 .  ✫  ·　. 

 

 

The ceiling in the Great Hall reflects his mood: churning and soggy and grey.  

Everyone around them is talking about quidditch, asking Sonja for gossip from practise and placing bets on how many times she’ll score. Even pokes at his Cornflakes and nods along, attempting the requisite pride until she’s dragged away by her teammates, laughing and protesting and blowing him kisses.

He’s considering sneaking away to the library so he can sleep when a rumble of amused consternation rolls towards him. He follows the turning heads to the Slytherin table.

A blond guy from the year below is half way through his toast and holding the remainder up like a shield as a howler bowls towards him. He winces as it stops. He doesn’t look surprised, but the guy he’s sitting with glances around, all hair and incipient protection. A Gryffindor, Even’s pretty sure. He mutters something Even can’t lip read. 

The blond guy snags the howler right out of the air and tugs it open, almost bored. Or trying very hard to look it, at least.

“ISAK VALTERSEN,” the howler shrieks. “HOW DARE YOU IGNORE THAT LETTER! WHAT WOULD YOUR ANCESTORS SAY IF THEY KNEW YOU WERE TREATING YOUR MOTHER LIKE THIS? YOUR GRANDFATHER’S PORTRAIT HAS TURNED AROUND TO FACE THE WALL AND YOUR GREAT GRANDFATHER HAS DISAPPEARED ENTIRELY! SEE WHAT YOU’VE DONE TO YOUR FAMILY? WHAT REASON COULD THERE POSSIBLY BE TO SEND THE OWL BACK WITHOUT EVEN OPENING THE LETTER? WHY WOULD YOU DO SOMETHING SO HURTFUL? AFTER EVERYTHING WE HAVE BEEN THROUGH. YOUR MOTHER IS DIS—”

Even tries not to listen. He focuses on his pumpkin juice; he’s the only one not watching it like it’s the quidditch world cup final, though.

With a growl and a whoosh, the howler sets itself on fire. Even looks up as the guy — Isak, Even supposes — watches it burn itself out and rain ash down on his breakfast.

A spikey silence descends.

When the muttering kicks in, Isak rolls his eyes and sucks the detritus up with the end of his wand. He’s going for detached, but his ears have turned almost as red as the howler was before it combusted.

“Fuck,” one of his friends says, clutching his skull with both hands, “that was —”

“What happened? Why did you —” the Gryffindor one starts.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Isak —”

“I _said_ it doesn’t matter,” Isak says.

He pushes up off the table and stalks past where Even’s sitting, moving so fast he drags a breeze behind him. He doesn’t look back to see if the others are following.

After a moment’s debate, they trail after him. Or maybe they were just leaving, anyway.

 

  ·　 .  ✫  ·　.

 

He’s not supposed to do it. He’s really really not supposed to do it. But it’s been a week since the calming draught actually calmed him and longer since the one for dreamless sleep actually did its thing. Underneath his skin, everything is frantic. He just wants a moment away from the thoughts he doesn’t want to be thinking to see what else is there.

The classroom’s deserted, everyone stuffing themselves with treacle tart and stories upstairs. He gathers the ingredients — moonstone, hellebore syrup, powder of unicorn horn — and gets to work.

The potion flashes through its rainbow: green, pink, purple, turquoise red orange, red again, and back to turquoise. Each colour brings him closer to what he wants: the steam which’ll offer him a tiny rebellion against the gnarled roots strangling his mind.

 

  ·　 .  ✫  ·　. 

 

The wind circles around the Astronomy Tower, whistling to itself. Even hunkers down near the wall with his ball and his potion and his uncooperative brain.

There’s a creak on the stairs. Even whips his head towards it. At first, he thinks it’s the Bloody Baron, but when the door opens, the person responsible is smaller, solid, and alive. Isak-shaped.

He freezes when he sees Even, a quiet, “Oh,” popping on his mouth.

According to the corridor chatter, he got another howler at dinner, this one a garbled, stream of consciousness rant about the rise of the Dark Lord which had several first years clutching their robes and Professor Longbottom striding down the table for a quiet word. In the wake of it, he looks pale and blank as the moon.

They stare at each other.

Even shuffles along the wall. “I don’t think you should be up here,” he says, making room for him anyway.

Isak pockets his hands in the same manner some people would square up for a fight. “Are you a prefect?”

Even snorts at the thought. He digs in his robes for the vial. Dark silver smoke curls up from white liquid like an inversion of mist over a lake in early morning.

It’s enough to convince Isak to sit next to him.

Even pops the cork and holds the vial out.

Isak breathes the smoke in.

He doesn’t even ask what it is.

 

 ·　 .  ✫  ·　. 

  

“You’re not concentrating,” Sonja whispers, loud and harsh enough that everyone on the row in front twitches with hearing it.

Even pretends he didn’t, stares at the wall behind Professor Vector’s head. He knows the speech by heart, the one that starts _fall behind again_ and ends with him storming off because he knows all right, he knows. 

It should be obvious why predicting the future has lost its appeal. He spends half his life picturing how it’ll end. He doesn’t need a complex equation to see himself rotting in St Mungo’s, shock spell after shock spell jolting his body and rebounding off his brain.

 

  ·　 .  ✫  ·　.  

 

 

He cries off dinner, tells Sonja he has a headache and he’s going to take something for it and then go to bed. It’s not a lie, if he twists it, because the problem _is_ his head, the way it aches under the weight of expectation and the way he will never slot into it.

In the dormitory, he looks out over the grounds, to the quidditch pitch that’ll light up on Saturday with cheering and screams. The mountains are better, less demanding, but they still feel like something to which he will never belong. He turns away from the window, a vial of his potion in his pocket, his fingers curled around it, the coolness of the glass taking the edge off the thing he’s been battling.

He’s heading for the astronomy stairwell when footsteps _tap tap tap_ their way into his consciousness. He slows. He can’t cope with a telling off and a letter to his parents detailing how he’s broken his promise to behave, concocts a lie about forgetting something after last night’s lesson on meteor showers and summons his telescope to support it.

The footsteps get closer; he’s relieved, and something else entirely, to see they belong to Isak’s feet. It’s only when Even sees him, he realises a significant portion of his thoughts have been attached to Isak all day.

Isak has a letter clutched to his stomach. He covers it with both hands when he sees Even glance at it, as if Even might be able to read what it says through the parchment. Even wonders what’s in there he wouldn’t want anyone to see. Maybe everyone has secrets they’d like to smoke away. He meets Isak’s eye, looks up at the ceiling, meets Isak’s eye again in invitation.

Isak nods, but carries on his way to the owlery, and Even flickers, painfully, with the idea he’ll never see him again. 

But he does.

“Are you _actually_ doing Astronomy?” Isak says, closing the door behind himself with his foot.

The letter is gone and he’s aiming for dismissive and sceptical, but his eyes sparkle. Underneath, it delights him, the thought of Even doing homework.

“Trying to.”

Isak takes up station beside him, nudging Even out of the way with his hip.

“This is all wrong,” he says, after a quick assessment through Even’s telescope. He turns the star chart Even placed on the parapet around. He taps the middle and then points up above them. “Find Vega,” he says, “always find Vega and then the rest slots into place.” 

Even knows where Vega is. He just wanted to see if Isak would show him.

“You know the story about Vega? The Japanese one?” Even says. He turns, leans back against the wall and slips the vial from his pocket, checking Isak’s seen it before he uncorks it and inhales. “She’s a celestial princess, falls in love with a mortal — the star Altair. But her father forbids it and separates them with a celestial river. But once a year, on the seventh night of the seventh moon, a bridge of magpies forms across it so they can reunite. Sometimes, Altair doesn’t make it. Vega cries, and her teardrops fall all over Japan as rain while his fall as the Perseid meteor shower.”

Isak lifts an eyebrow and takes the vial. “Or,” he says, lifting it to his mouth, breathing in the silvery steam. “Vega is the fifth brightest star, 25 light years away, with a surface temperature thousands of degrees hotter than the sun. It’s blue because it’s burning through its fuel at an incredible rate and will die inside half a billion years.”

He coughs, stoppers the vial with his thumb so when Even takes it back, he has to replace it with his own.

“And Altair?” Even says.

To keep the thrill of touching off his face, he slides down the wall. His head is heavy and empty with smoke, through which Isak is curling like a beckoning finger in fog at the heart of the Forbidden Forest. Danger or the way out? Even doesn’t care.

“Rotates extremely rapidly,” Isak says, plumping down beside him. He makes a noise that says the Astronomy Tower was closer than he expected, that his casual manner about smoking potions belies the truth of his experience. He’s reckless; Even likes it. He wonders into what other things Isak might be cajoled. “The speed creates this thing called gravity darkening — it wraps around its middle like a belt. Altair sits in an interstellar cloud 16.7 light years away, making it one of the closest stars you can see without a telescope.” He breathes out a quiet, “Fuck,” and blinks as the smoke hits. 

At the lift of Even’s eyebrow, he takes the vial back. He breathes the vapour in and puffs out his thoughts about Lyra, the constellation, and Epsilon Lyrae, the double-double star. He gestures as he explains how it’s two pairs locked in an involved gravitational dance and goes wide-eyed as he describes the nebula in the shape of a ring which he thinks is the galaxy’s most beautiful thing.

Every time Even’s seen him, Isak’s been with friends, but still, Isak speaks in hesitant, eager snatches, as if he doesn’t usually get to talk. Maybe they’d laugh if he said this. Or maybe it’s that thing where a different version of him has grown in the shadow of who they think he is.

Maybe a bit of him wants them to see it.

Maybe it’s always easier with somebody new to just be who you are.

Whatever the cause, his face comes alive in a way Even never daydreamed when Even asks him questions. He’s enchanting, makes Even think of celestial beings and want to scoop all of Isak up in his hands and inhale.

“What’s the story?” Even rests his head against the frigid, curved stone and breathes tendrils of smoke out to tickle Isak’s chin, touching it by proxy. “Which god created the nebula? Is it a gift for someone? Or a curse?”

He smiles, imagining a vengeful lover ripping a hole in the sky, but Isak frowns at him in soft confusion.

“Why does there have to be a story?”

Even shrugs.

“The fact that it’s just _out there_ existing is what’s interesting.”

“You think?”

Isak’s eyelids slide closed in reply. He eases back as if the hard granite of the tower is a pillow. “We’re surrounded by stories, half-truths, theories,” he says, words a lazy pile-up as they fall off his tongue. “But these massive things, they just exist in the sky. They were there before there were words for them. They don’t need stories. They don’t need explaining. They’re wonderful just as they are.”

Even never thought of it like that. He makes up for it now, picking at the idea until he thinks he understands it, whereupon it collapses into tatters he can’t make sense of at all.

They stay until it’s too cold to stay any longer, leave separately by unspoken accord.

“Tomorrow?” Even says, to the stairwell, unsure if Isak’s too far down to hear.

“Tomorrow,” comes the reply from the dark, and Isak’s footsteps tap him away, like the fading of a dream.

 

   ·　 .  ✫  ·　. 

 

The candlelight jitters in the library. Even checks each face for Isak’s features, even though he doesn’t have it worked out yet, how to say hi. He bounces his foot under the table as he barrels through a dozen explanations of why they started talking, imagining someone will demand it the instant they look at each other where people can see. 

Sonja curls her hand around the back of his neck to pull him in. “Nearly finished?”

He stares at his own writing. It’s slanting, unreadable, in the opposite direction to how it used to. He can’t tell her it’s like he’s been invaded by another person whose thoughts are too quick for his hand.

“Almost,” he says, and murmurs a kiss to the side of her mouth. “Go up? If I keep you up late before the match, everyone will kill me.”

She packs up her things, ruffles his hair as she stands. “It’s good that you’re trying,” she says, and kisses the top of his head. “Don’t stay too long. I can read it over for you in the morning, if you want.”

She leaves with a smile that tries not to leak sadness. It hurts her that the person who used to be top of the class at Charms isn’t hers anymore. But everyone agreed while he was sleeping, less actual magic, more dry learning where losing emotional control wouldn’t cause any harm.

He looks down. His essay is a mess lacking both argument and citation; all he can think about is Vega crying for her lover and watering the planet with her grief, his lighting up the sky. He always thought love should be like that, water and fire, drowning in and burning on each other’s emotions.

After the last year, though, he can’t deny the appeal of peaceful simplicity, someone who’d look at him and just allow him to be.

He wonders if it’s too early or if Isak’s shaken off his friends and is waiting for him at the top of the tower. He gathers his essay up, either way.

 

   ·　 .  ✫  ·　. 

 

Each turn of the stairs winds Even closer to the conclusion Isak won’t be there. He hovers at the top of the staircase, listening for a clue from the other side of the door, so his ear can tell the rest of him how to react. There’s nothing, so he pushes the door open. 

Isak’s sitting at the bottom of the parapet with half a bottle of Firewhiskey and his hoodie pulled up against the cold.

“You started without me?” Even says.

Isak lifts the bottle and bounces it off his own head in salute. “Happy Friday.”

Even swings to grab it on his way down to join him. He wants to know everything about Isak: who he shares a room with, what they’re like, what he can see out of his window, what makes him wake up scared of the dark. He wants to know so much he can barely focus on his face, but he makes himself slow down enough to count the moles on his cheek and turn them into a constellation. He swigs from the bottle, thinking of a kiss imploded into constituent parts and how the pressure of Isak’s lips is now in his mouth.

“Strong,” he says, and presses the back of his hand to his lips.

“Uh huh.” Isak’s expression is drained, but what’s left looks up with cautious optimism.

Even extracts the vial from his pocket and holds it out. “You want some? It’s the last one, though, until I can brew some more.”

“You _make_ this?” Isak looks disproportionately impressed. He holds the vial up to the moonlight and watches the smoke rise and swirl in its tiny, cylindrical prison before uncorking it. He takes a long sniff and falls back against the wall with a quiet, reverent, “Wow.”

They share the rest, talking about nothings that Even repeats to himself over and over again, Even choosing his own words just to see if he can make Isak smile. The smoke and the Firewhiskey help loosen Isak’s tongue. Unprompted, he tells Even he got bitten by an owl the other day and he’s probably only going to get an E in Transfiguration because it’s right where he rests his wand. He holds his finger out to show Even the wound and Even wants to kiss it. It almost spills out of him: how are you finding your NEWTs so far, have you thought about a career, tell me who you will be. He stoppers them because if Isak asks him back, Even has nothing to say.

Even fishes his ball out of his pocket and aims it in a lazy arc so it bounces off the floor and up to rebound off the door. He catches it, does it again and again and again until there’s a rhythm to it to maintain.

Isak watches him with interest, carefully weighed.

“What?” Even says.

“Nothing,” Isak says, with equal teasing.

“Don’t you ever just need something to do with your hands?” Even says, and Isak lifts an eyebrow. “I mean, something… repetitive? To calm your brain down.”

“You mean when it’s too… noisy?”

“Hmm. It’s better for it to fixate on this than to run around itself in circles.”

“Ok.”

Isak snags the ball out of the air the next time it comes back.

Even makes a grab for it too late and Isak laughs at his mutter of frustrated protest, cradles the ball to his chest as he leans away, not far enough to be out of reach but far enough to make it clear he won’t just give it back. They dance for a moment, forward and back, but Even lets him have it, curious whether he’s about to pitch it over the edge of the wall like Sonja did to his last one in a row over a potion for normality she’d read about in a magazine.

But Isak doesn’t throw it, at the wall, over the edge, or otherwise. He unfurls his hand and peers at the ball as if it’s as fascinating as a planet. After a moment there could be a centaur war in, he says, “It’s rainbow.”

“What of it?”

Isak looks down, shakes his head, curls his fingers around the ball as if it’s precious. He holds it tight for a moment before throwing it on the perfect trajectory for it to bounce off the wall, across the floor twice, and land in Even’s hand.

Even’s stomach is all smiles.

Maybe Isak knows what it means.

Maybe it’s a game for two, now.

 

  ·　 .  ✫  ·　.  

 

It’s three in the morning and the castle is empty of everything except the snoring of the paintings and the scuttle of house elves somewhere Even can’t fathom. The corridor where they’re standing is chilled but they linger, not saying goodbye.

It’s Isak who should be leaving; this is where Even lives. But Isak just rests against the wall, squirming his shoulders like there’s a way to get comfy he just hasn’t found yet, flickers his gaze from Even’s feet to his mouth.

The words they’re exchanging turn into sniggers and then to nothing at all except the quirk of Isak’s eyebrow.

Even thinks there’s invitation in the silence, one he certainly can’t turn down.

He leans in, and when Isak doesn’t laugh, when there’s only the flash of hazel that says he peeked at Even but wasn’t brave enough to keep looking, he thumbs a question onto Isak’s cheek. Isak doesn’t answer, but he doesn’t hex him either, which past experience tells Even he would if having another guy in his space was unwanted. Even gathers enough courage to guide their lips together, and by the time he gets there, Isak’s hungry for his mouth.

Any second he’s going to tell Isak about Sonja.

He is.

He is.

He is.

He uses his tongue to push the word _girlfriend_ into Isak’s mouth. Isak’s fingers tighten on his arm before sliding up to cling to the neck of his t-shirt. He tugs the thought right out of Even’s head.

When they finally break apart, Even still says nothing. He can have this, can’t he? He can have one perfect, crystalline moment, so long as it stays caught in a separate world, wrapped in this quiet like a snow globe.

“Goodnight, Even,” Isak says, and right until that second, Even didn’t know Isak knew his name.

 

   ·　 .  ✫  ·　. 

 

The quidditch pitch is a cacophony of colour and voices, green and blue mingling with silver and bronze.

Even scans the crowd. Once upon a time he’d have tumbled down here with Mikael, them grabbing onto each other as they teased about who the best chaser was, Even rooting for Sonja and Mikael defending Yousef and Elias from Even’s good-natured jibes. Now, they all go out of their way to leave their room before Even’s awake and he indulges them by pretending to sleep more than he does.

The closest he’s come to actual interaction was a question about whether he’s the one who left the window open all night. They didn’t believe the shake of his head, but the only result was a rueful shrug from Yousef before he followed the others downstairs.

Even tucks his chin further inside his scarf. He lets his gaze skip from face to face until it alights on warm hazel turned in his direction.

Isak’s standing with his back to where people are heading, like a sentry in front of the Ravenclaw stand. “Hi,” he says, and it sounds like a question.

Having looked for him, Even shouldn’t be surprised to have found him, and yet he takes a step back, startled by the fact of Isak’s existence. “Hello.”

Isak’s green and silver scarf’s bundled up about his ears and he barely peers over the top of its folds. “Hi,” he says, more definitive this time.

“Hello, Isak.”

“Hi,” he says, this one like an impulse he can’t help and he follows it up with a somewhat baffled, “fuck. What?” 

Even laughs, his only defence against the memory of Isak’s body pressed against a wall and the soft, urgent noises evoked by his mouth.

“Er — it’s going to be a good game,” Isak says, gestures towards the pitch with a lift of his shoulder. “At least, that’s what everyone’s saying.”

“You think you’re going to win against the best chaser line-up Ravenclaw has had in a century?”

“I… have no idea.” Isak laughs into his scarf, shrugs as he admits, “I don’t really know anything about quidditch. I just came because — ”

A body edges towards them through the crowd, catching Isak’s attention, but it’s only when they shake themselves free of the crush that Even realises who it is.

Sana has her hijab tucked up with snake pin and snitches dangling from hoops in both ears. She rocks back on her heels when she sees who Isak’s talking to and the greeting she was forming never lands.

Even fingers the ball in his pocket.

“It’s about to start,” Sana says, to Isak. 

“You think?” Isak says, and he waves at the last students pushing past them, widening his eyes at her in a way that makes her cock her head and squint at him in one-eyed irritation.

“Well, unless you want to sit where we can’t see shit again,” Sana says, “I suggest you move your scrawny arse.”

Isak rolls his eyes, but he takes a couple of steps towards the other Slytherins, apologetic eyes lingering on Even. 

“Good luck,” Even says, and Sana holds Even’s gaze with unfriendly question as she tugs Isak’s arm to drag him to their place in the opposite stand. 

 

   ·　 .  ✫  ·　. 

 

The match pings between violent and aggressive, with both sides feeling aggrieved at every point scored. Even divides his attention between Sonja, soaring up to turn into a silhouette in front of the clouds, and to where the sunlight catches Isak’s hair and turns it barley gold.

Isak was supposed to stay stuck in a moment but he’s refusing, turning to possibility every time Even looks at him.

Sonja swoops low, screams at her beaters to do something useful as the Slytherin chasers make a play for the goal.

Isak looks across. His frown is assessing. Sana bends close to his ear.

Even’s stomach flutters like it’s full of snitch wings. Sana’s told him. She’s told him about Sonja, about everything. He pictures Isak hurling accusations and Even silencing him with a kiss and a confession.

Then Isak smiles, small but directed right at Even.

Maybe Sana didn’t tell him anything.

Maybe she was explaining the rules.

Maybe Even should be relieved instead of annoyed.

Slytherin win, and Even’s grateful. He’s not sure he could’ve faced a party tonight and with Sonja on the team, no way he could avoid it. He watches Isak bob away on a wave of celebration he looks confused by. He collects Sonja from the changing room, slings an arm around her shoulder, and muffles his consolations with her hair, listening to her complain about the refereeing calls, hoping he’s muttering in all the right places and all the right ways.

“Did you finish your essay?” she says, looking for a change of subject as they approach the castle. “Elias said you didn’t get in until four.”

“I fell asleep on the table.”

Sonja reaches up to push his hair away from his face. “You know it’s not good for you to get tired.”

“That’s why I took a nap on the table,” he says, and pulls away when she frowns instead of laughing.

 

   ·　 .  ✫  ·　. 

 

The Potions classroom stinks with the failed attempts of first years. It’s diverting everyone enough that Even sneaks into the supply cupboard to siphon off the ingredients he needs with minimal concern at being caught. He hides them in a crack in the wall behind where mandrakes are hung up and drying, counting down the minutes until he can return. He’s mapped out the possible routes to Isak, through loitering in the corridor outside the Slytherin dungeon to asking Elias to give Sana a message, has even thought about sending him an owl as messenger and in-joke combined. 

He finishes his notes faster than anyone, annoyed at how slow everyone including time is being, uses the rest of the lesson to draw on a scrap of spare parchment: the summer triangle and their constellations, just the shape, with none of them labelled.

Isak will get it. Even knows he will.

Even lingers, pretending it’s taking him longer to get his cauldron and things together than it does. He keeps one eye on the Slytherin on the other side of the room who dropped a full jar of porcupine quills and is still busy tidying them, pulling stray ones out of his palm.

“Hey,” Even says, and he sweeps a handful of quills off the desk in a show of helping. He needs them later, anyway. “You know Isak? Isak Valtersen?”

The guy considers Even with his head on one side. “Why? What did you hear?”

“Nothing. Can you give him this?” Even holds the scrap of parchment out. He’s folded it over and sealed it with a charm which’ll scream if anyone but Isak breaks it, cast from a hair he found stuck to his sleeve.

The guy eyes it with suspicion, the way it thrums with volatile magic unfamiliar. “What’s in it for me?”

“I’ll tell you which salve will stop your hands from itching.” The guy takes the parchment and waits. “When you bring me a reply,” Even says, with a smile.

The guy rolls his eyes but he goes, leaves Even to his jiggling.

He comes back inside ten minutes with another scrap of parchment.

_Sundown?_

Isak’s handwriting is terrible. Even wants to dance through the room on his toes.

 

   ·　 .  ✫  ·　. 

 

 The last strains of red streak the horizon between the mountains. Neither of them looks at it for very long, locked as they are on each other the second the door clicks closed.

Even digs his thumb into Isak’s cheek because he can’t say _I’ve missed you_ and Isak breathes him in like smoke, like it and Even are the same, like nothing exists for him except the stone at his back and the sound of Even’s name as it rolls between their tongues.

They’re still kissing the same kiss when the moon is full and bright in the sky, break it off just to start a new one under a blanket Isak transfigured from a hanky.

Things go further than Even intended. He wishes Sonja’s name would pound in his head, but she’s only there when he thinks about how he’s not thinking of her. He closes his eyes in dread, in case his guilt drowns out his desire. Against Isak’s neck, he bites wishes: that he could inhabit two worlds at once, put both futures on a scale, the one where he’s Isak’s and properly, the one where Sonja doesn’t look at him like he’s already failed.

They both disappear when Isak tugs at his hair and his hip in simultaneous command; at the nip of Isak’s frustration on his lip, Even thinks he swallows the entire sky. 

They stay until Isak stops threatening to fall asleep and actually does it, snuffling on Even’s shoulder about his dreams. Even doesn’t want to wake him; he wants to spend the whole night here in this place where reality can’t penetrate. He traces all the constellations he knows the shape of on Isak’s shoulder, stalling, but they’ll both be missed. He pushes Isak’s hair back from his face and whispers jokes to him until Isak groans himself awake, batting Even’s horrible punchlines away with soft fists.

It tips the scale.

He hands Isak his jumper. “Are you going to Hogsmeade?”

Isak lifts one shoulder. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Do you want to go with me?”

“Ok. Yeah,” he says, and his whole face brightens, even though he tries to hide it as soon as he realises that’s what it’s doing. “Sure.”

“Meet outside the gates?”

Isak nods.

Even kisses him again, chasing the taste of dwindled smoke on his tongue.

 

   ·　 .  ✫  ·　. 

 

It feels like the castle itself is chattering as they all stumble out of it. In the crush, Mikael and his friends end up at Even’s elbow but there’s only one face Even’s interested in seeing. All the others blur until he spots Isak, bursting through the noise like a spot of brightness and silence all at once. 

He’s almost to where Isak is when someone catches him around the waist with a jump and a, “Leaving without me?”

Sonja grins, trying to tuck herself under his arm.

“I thought you were going with Mari to get new dress robes?” Even says. He folds his arms around himself as if he’s cold but it does nothing to hide that they’re closer than friends.

Sonja wrinkles her nose up at the idea. “Nope, all yours. I’ve been neglecting you lately.”

Even swallows, but the flutter of panic doesn’t have time to stretch its wings because Isak is right there, the word “Hi,” turning to a question on his mouth as he looks from Even to Sonja, her arm snaking around Even’s waist.

“This is Isak,” Even says.

“I’m Sonja, Even’s girlfriend.”

Sonja’s hand is out and shaking Isak’s before Even can do anything to stop it. He expects the world to explode as they touch, like the two versions of it he’s been straddling have collided and both will end up as smithereens. He knows he should be worried about Sonja seeing in Isak’s face some confirmation of a suspicion she’s been quietly harbouring, but as they stand there, it’s Isak knowing about Sonja which makes him feel sick. The death of his world takes possibility with it; Sonja has already forgiven Even for worse than this.

Isak catches his eye with a hundred questions, but he answers Sonja’s, “Shall we?” with a nod.

He’s good at pretending he’s not feeling things.

Even looks away; he’s not. He wishes Isak would scream at him, blow the whole thing into the open, tell her that last night Even had his hands and his mouth all over him, that if she looked closely, she’d see the impression of his teeth tucked into Even’s skin.

But Isak is all quiet, polite questions about the quidditch game and how long they’ve been together, piecing together the life Even’s so studiously kept away from him. By the time they get to the village, Even’s breathing shallow and exposed.

 

   ·　 .  ✫  ·　. 

 

The Three Broomsticks is warm, heaves under the smell of butterbeer and drizzle brushed off cloaks. Sonja’s teammates are all there, wave her over, but she stays with Even, asking what Isak wants to drink, offering to get the first round, effusive and eager because Even has made a new friend. 

Isak grimaces as he sits down opposite. He avoids Even’s eyes as he peels off his outer layers and peeks at him only when he runs out of things on the table to fiddle with.

“I — ” Even starts. “I was going to tell you.”

Isak scratches at the back of his neck. “I’m not sure that’s the point, Even.”

Sana and a group of girls fall in through the door, cackling so hard Isak turns to look.

One of them gives Isak a fly-by half hug from behind on her way to the bar but Sana lingers, watching the others collapse on a table in the opposite corner, her hands on the back of the empty chair that’ll be Sonja’s when she returns.

“Hanging out again,” she says. “You need a lot of help with Astronomy.”

Isak wets his lip and Sana lifts an eyebrow. She doesn’t look surprised when Sonja comes back with three tankards, but does when Sonja asks if she’s joining them.

“No,” Sana says, and she waits just long enough for it to be awkward before she leans in to Isak. “Be careful,” she says, in a stage whisper, “everyone knows you can’t trust Ravenclaws.”

Sonja laughs as if Sana is joking and Sana rolls her eyes as she walks away.

“Is she your girlfriend?” Sonja says, wiping her butter beer moustache with her thumb.

Isak looks to Even for a hint as to how he should answer, eventually going with a hedging no that sounds as if it’s a question and also four sentences long.

“Do you have one?”

Isak opens his mouth, then closes it again, and studies the bubbles popping on the top of his butter beer. “I was hooking up with someone,” he says, and he winces. “But I’m not sure it’s going anywhere.”

 

   ·　 .  ✫  ·　. 

 

The Christmas break looms ever closer. Across the Great Hall, Isak catches increasingly erratic howlers, watching them incinerate themselves over pumpkin juice and pie. Whenever their eyes meet, his gaze skids away, embarrassed to be caught looking or reluctant to give in to temptation, Even can’t decide.

Even tells himself clichés about how they’ll stay friends, even though they haven’t spoken since Isak finished his butterbeer and slipped out of the Three Broomsticks with a look that made Even want to die. He consoles himself that Sonja knows him. She’s looked into his eyes when they only saw nothing and still wants to be with him. If he doesn’t think about it, he doesn’t feel like he’s about to cry.

In the last Potions class of the year, he writes the same note he’s written a dozen times:

_Are you ok?_

_I didn’t mean for this to happen_

_There’s so much you don’t know about me_

_I’m sorry_

He pictures himself handing it to the Slytherin he used before, but the path between the desks seems too fraught, like tangled scrubland infested with all the things he never said. He burns the note, brews a batch of potion, and takes it to the top of the tower. He longs for Isak to be there having sensed his intention.

He opens the door.

He’s alone.

He finds a quarter full bottle of Firewhiskey, unable to tell if it’s the one they forgot about or if Isak’s been up here alone. He doesn’t entertain it being someone else’s. It just feels like Isak when he rolls the glass between his hands. He breathes in the smoke and imagines a reply to the note he didn’t send:

_I miss you_

_It’s fine_

_Everybody has secrets_

When he looks at the clouds, it’s like they’re scrawled in Isak’s handwriting, right across the sky.

 

   ·　 .  ✫  ·　. 

  

The windows of Diagon Alley sag under the weight of holly and pine. Outside the Leaky Cauldron, carollers sing traditional songs, trying to draw some seasonal spirit out of weary last minute shoppers. Even weaves his way between Amanuensis for a new quill to help his dad with the crossword and Flourish and Blotts to buy his mum the latest volume in the muggle crime series she’s obsessed with. He doesn’t know what to get Sonja, even though he’s thought and thought. His own reflection almost laughs, cold and harsh; he’s caught himself in a lie.

He pulls up short. Over the road at Eeylops, Isak is scrubbing the fog off the window with his finger and peering inside.

Even should walk on, pretend he hasn’t seen him, but Even’s heart responds like an eager dog. He crosses to Isak’s shoulder, leans in, and says, “Don’t get bitten again.”

Isak jumps. Confusion races over his face when he sees it’s Even. He doesn’t reply or laugh, and fleetingly it’s like being stunned, the thought Isak doesn’t remember telling Even about his bite.

And then Isak smiles. Reluctantly, but he does. He rubs at his finger with his thumb as if there might still be a wound there. He looks up, much younger than he usually seems but at the same time anciently sad.

“Right. I’ll try.”

Whatever Even was going to say next shrivels on his tongue. He wishes he could transport them to another universe, one where they’re meeting with intent.

Maybe they’re going to Fortescue’s.

Maybe they’re shopping together.

Maybe after this, Isak will take him to meet his parents over a mince pie.

He doesn’t care. He just wants to inhabit a space and a time where tucking Isak’s errant curl behind his ear is allowed. He wants to walk across the cobbles with Isak, touching his elbow to steer him towards something he thinks will amuse him. He wants it just to happen, to slip from one universe to another, but he knows there’s no magic strong enough to rearrange the world.

Only words will do it. They all feel clumsy on his tongue, but he has to try.

“I broke up with Sonja,” he says.

It’s not a lie, as such. In his head he’s done it every day in every way he can imagine. They’ve screamed at each other and hugged with understanding, she’s told him she hates him and she’s happy for him all at once. Whether he’s said the words to her or not doesn’t matter; in his pounding heart, he isn’t hers.

He scans Isak’s face. He’ll do it for real the second Isak gives him a sign.

“Oh?”

Isak’s word is tiny; it feels like an explosion in the sky.

Even can’t stop himself from grinning. “Is that all you’ve got to say about it?” Isak stutters through a start that comes to nothing, so Even takes his hand. “You do want —?”

Isak’s eyes come up slowly. “I do. If you do?”

“Of course I do.”

“Isak?”

The voice comes from the doorway, a plaintive bark.

“Dad,” Isak says.

He doesn’t drop Even’s hand, but he shifts so it’s not obvious, the way they’re performing an intricate dance like kissing with their thumbs.

“We’ll be late, Isak. You know how important this is.”

Isak sighs, shoulders sagging. “Right. I just need a minute. This is Even, by the way.”

Isak’s dad nods just barely in assessment before he turns away, having given no indication whether the name means anything to him or not.

“When will we see each other?” Even says, low so only Isak will hear.

“After Christmas?”

He shivers at how illicit it feels. “That’s too long. Tell me where you live. I’ll steal a broom.”

Isak laughs, oblivious to the fact Even’s not joking. His head is a riot of flying cars he half remembers the location of and Apparating across the country, even though technically he’s not allowed.

“Tell me.”

Isak rolls his eyes, offers Even a considering wince. “Saint Leonard’s Lighthouse.”

Even goes to kiss him but Isak leans back, letting go of his hand, pressing his lips into a line.

“I’ve got to — ” He gestures to the tall man with sandy hair, a bag of owl treats, and a look of bewildered harassment. “ — but — ”

“I’ll floo you?”

Isak nods. 

Even watches him go, notes the way he and his father don’t talk as Isak falls into step beside him. He hums along with the carollers, suddenly in love with Christmas. He goes to Wiseacre’s, and buys Isak a picture he can’t afford, the ring nebula where the stars twinkle and hide at the twist of the frame.

 

  ·　 .  ✫  ·　.  

 

The party leaves a sour taste in his mouth, even before it’s happened.

It’s in the mansion that sits on the outskirts of the village, where ancestors who founded wizarding universities toss out what they think are general knowledge questions and blink with lazy superiority from the walls. All of the neighbours will be there, Sonja and her family too. He’ll have to navigate conversations about how he’s doing and what a fright he gave everyone, accept advice and tutted shame.

He hasn’t slept in days. He took apart the clock in his bedroom because it wouldn’t stop ticking, enchanted the hands to run backwards to lessen his panic about still being awake. Each second sounds like _Sonja, Sonja, Sonja_. He doesn’t know what to say to her, but whatever he does to the clock, it chimes the same thing: it’s time he said it, anyway.

He bounces his ball between the wall and the space between his own feet, weighing getting it out of the way versus doing it in a public setting, telling her when they’re not at school versus letting her enjoy the festivities. When his mother comes in to tell him to get ready, his thoughts are a swarm of unmade decisions. The lack of motion from his hand makes his muscles hunker down inside him like caged animals taunted by a keeper. A thing in his head snarls at her for interrupting. It’s a struggle to keep it inside.

She tells him they’re _floo_ ing at half past and not to make them late.

“I’d rather _apparate_ ,” he says, thinking of the house to himself, floo powder, and Isak’s face. “I’ll come along later.”

“That’s a silly idea. Just get ready, you’ll feel better,” she says, and leaves him to the dress robes she’s hung on the door.

Even hurls his ball as hard as he can. When it falls to the floor it’s taken a chunk of wall with it and in a fit of immediate remorse, he sticks it back up with a patching spell and winces in case anyone heard.

She’s back thirty minutes later with a different outfit, holly woven into her hair, and a stern expression. “Why aren’t you dressed yet?”

“What if I don’t go? I don’t really feel like it.”

“We always go together as a family.”

Even rolls his eyes. “So?”

“What’s the matter? Is it Sonja? Normally you’re inseparable.”

Even screws his hands up in his pockets.

He thinks of double stars, the ones locked together, revolving around each other forever, if they long to see what exists outside their bond. He wishes he could break free without doing it, have it just happen. He flickers with annoyance. If Sonja really knew him, surely she’d have felt the dwindling of his feelings and words wouldn’t be necessary at all.

His mother sits on the edge of his bed and pats the duvet next to her, the way she did when he was a child. He paces in front of the window. He’s wasting so much time. He should make Isak something. A cake. He should make him a cake and take it over with the picture and it’d be snowing — or if it’s not, he could conjure some, show up with that as the backdrop for his smile.

“Don’t you think?” his mother says.

Even back tracks through what she was saying about how lucky he is to have someone who’ll put up with his moods. She goes on to the importance of appearances, how he’ll only ever find a job if he’s made the effort to show he can be stable, how he can’t afford to lose any more ground.

He fists his hair. “Shit, all right, all right, I’ll go.”

 

   ·　 .  ✫  ·　. 

 

He knows it’s a mistake as soon as they step out of the fireplace. 

When he was alone, the flickering fragments of the future were squashed out by the monotony of his thumping ball, but people always hold up a mirror to his thoughts of twisted insecurity, and here, there are twenty of them all showing him different things he’s required to be. Conversations he’s had but wants to do again bump into ones he’s been planning, lay over the ones he’s actually having, all of them five different versions with ratios of success and failure conflicting in his head. He wants a time turner to go forward and back until he gets everything right, until he can he can be certain he appears normal and charming, until he can find a moment of perfect quiet.

Maybe he should’ve brought his potion.

Maybe he should just disappear.

He accepts a mulled wine to try and relax. His mother divests him off it almost immediately, tells him from the corner of her mouth it’s not a good idea. She slants a glance at Sonja, who rubs her knuckles up and down his back to show she heard, she understands.

“You got new dress robes,” Even says, shrinking from her touch, looking around and trying to make his interest convincing. “Did Mari get some too? Is she here? Did you come together?”

He doesn’t care, but it’s better when Sonja’s talking so he can focus on tuning her out as he does his well-worn routine of smiling and nodding along. His heart and his mind are equally racing, but they do a round of the party, tossing out hellos and season’s greetings to anyone important. Sonja fields the questions about how he’s doing, offers assurances she’s making sure he does his homework, as if the completion of essays might be some kind of defence.

An hour or two passes, and he realises he’s done nothing but offer grim compliance to what he knows are lies. He’s not doing well, he’s not keeping up as best he can; he wonders what will happen when she’s not there, if he’ll just scream in people’s faces. 

He leans against the wall next to the fire, thinking of stepping into it and asking for a lighthouse.

Sonja leans next to him and blows air up at her fringe.

He’s going to tell her about Isak.

He is.

He is.

He is.

He counts the baubles on the Christmas tree, breaking them down by colour and shape. Four gold stars, eight shiny red glass, seven matte green velvet, six pears, three apples or maybe another one hiding round the back. It bothers him the numbers don’t line up and he scans the room for more decorations, a box of spares where he might find another apple and velvet one to even things out. He opens all the cabinets which house trinkets and trophies, then goes out into the hall. He kneels in front of a chest and cracks the lid. 

“You, you boy!” It’s his least favourite painting, the one with the moustache and apple-like cheeks who lives in a room made entirely of scrolls. “Here’s an easy one for you, since Christmas is a time for charity. Who was Nessos and why is he important to a classic hero story?”

Even roots through the chest. “A centaur,” he says, with a terse glance at the painting. “Deianeira used his blood to — ”

“Ah, you’re the one aren’t you? The one who lost his marbles. You won’t find them in there, lad.”

“Get fucked.”

The painting sucks in a breath and in the doorway, Sonja flinches. “What are you doing?” she whispers.

He keeps his gaze on his hands because eye contact, unable to face the disappointment in her eyes. “Baubles — I think they keep them in — I’ll only be a minute.” He tosses aside a blanket that’s more moth hole and dust than wool, fingers scrabbling on a cardboard box about the right size. “Where — ”

“Even, you can’t just — ”

“Sorry, am I committing an act of grand impropriety? I can’t help it if whoever decorated the tree had no eye for symmetry.”

The painting lets out a ruddy guffaw. “Next question — what is the use of a phylactery?”

“For protection,” Even says. It’s not the right box and he huffs at it and chucks it back, moves down the hall to the cupboard their cloaks disappeared into. He tugs the handle. “Are you even trying? A first year would know that.”

“Even.”

The cupboard won’t open and he jiggles at it, ducking down to see how it locks.

“Feisty, eh? For what might you need the fat of an owl, the dung ball of a dung beetle, and unripened olive oil, then?”

“Invisibility,” Even says. He yanks at the lock then gets out his wand, points it at the mechanism. “If you can’t find owl fat, an eyeball will do. _Aloham_ —”

“Even.” Sonja’s fingers dig into his chin and she turns his face towards her. “Even, you can’t. You’re not — ”

He jerks away, frightened all of a sudden by her proximity, by the way another question is rolling out of the mouth of the painting, by the way she was about to say _sane_.

“Get away from me,” he says. “And you.” He turns his wand on the painting’s startled face, trying to remember if he’s ever read a hex to set the moustache of a painting on fire. Not a moustache perhaps but in a book on ancient hexes he memorised there was something about hair, he can adapt it. He mutters the first word. “ _Borti_ — no, wait. _Borke_ — ”

“Memory failed you?” The painting chortles with wet, breathy mockery. “Don’t waste your time with nonsense. You need something to rid you of evil spirits, child.”

Even backs against the wall.

All the ways this could go flash through his head: a duel with the painting, a spell to the chest, aurors mistaking him for someone possessed.

If everyone would just give him some space, he’d be fine, he could talk himself out of this. But Sonja’s stepping closer, not listening to what he’s saying, hands out towards him in a plea, and the painting is crowing about how he has a fine mind, shame it’s curdled at the edges and turning into cheese.

“Why can’t everyone just leave me alone?”

“Even, put your wand away.”

“Don’t tell me what to do. I don’t have to listen to you. You don’t know anything about me or what I’m capable of,” he says. His voice doesn’t sound quite familiar, has a certainty in it which it doesn’t usually. Maybe it’s getting it from his hands. He clenches them around his wand but it does nothing to arrest the feeling he’s about to do something reckless he won’t be able to take back. “Don’t you know? Can’t you tell? We’re not together anymore.”

“What? Since when?”

“Since — ” He shakes his head in a plea for her to stay where she is, not come any closer because right now, he could probably banish her to the moon. But he wants to say it. His blood is bubbling with the need for it, like a potion, one that’s dangerously potent and just needs one final thing. “ — now. Since now.”

“You don’t mean that — you’re being — when you’ve calmed down, you’ll see — ”

“There’s someone else.”

In the taut stoppage of time that follows, he tells her about Isak. He tries to explain it, how he didn’t mean to, or maybe he did, but he just needed someone who wasn’t trying to reassemble the Even who used to be. He draws her a picture of a boy who likes Even _now_ , who likes the broken pieces because he doesn’t know they’re pieces, of someone who’s not still annoyed with the one who drank a potion for slumber from which he never intended to rouse.

He wants her to throw up her hands and say that he’s right, that he’s figured it out, that she’s carved out a future around a shape of him that will never be and this is for the best. But the painting takes her side and things get louder and louder until he’s shaking with something uncontainable and she’s spitting, “You think he will want you, when he knows? How could you do this to me?”

She doesn’t understand it.

She says that he’s crazy.

Even puts a blast mark in the painting and stalks away because he can’t disagree.

 

   ·　 .  ✫  ·　. 

 

Outside, it’s too hot inside him but everything else is too cold.

For a moment, it’s calming, the disparity.

But then he remembers. He remembers a kiss that never happened and collapsed his life anyway, the choosing of corners in the wake of it and having nothing in his but his knees. He remembers a potion intoxicating as roses with a skull on the front and deadness he recognised in the hollows of its eyes. He remembers the hospital pillows and how they accepted his wailing, how he swore he would never go back there.

He can feel it like it’s already happening.

Maybe it never stopped.

Maybe he never got out.

Maybe Isak was a figment of his imagination, a conjuring from longing and loneliness.

He slashes at the air, firing sparks from his wand that belong to indeterminate spells.

It feels good to give in to it, the crackling poison in his veins, until he collapses, breathless, and heaving nonsense words at the ground.

Who even cares who even cares who even fucking cares. He’s set fire to a tree.

The sight of the smoke curling into the sky makes him laugh like he’ll never stop laughing.

In the distance, but not far enough away, people are shrieking.

His struggle takes him up to his feet and he Apparates, to a lighthouse which might only exist in his dreams.

 

   ·　 .  ✫  ·　. 

 

He never arrives.

 

   ·　 .  ✫  ·　. 

 

 

He wakes to a ceiling which isn’t his.

He turns over so he can ignore it, the flicker of reality just under his eyelids, impossibly out of reach.

 

  ·　 .  ✫  ·　.  

 

He sleeps.

It’s a relief that he can, though it taunts him, the idea this is it, how he’ll always be.

 

   ·　 .  ✫  ·　. 

 

Questions circle above him. What was he thinking?

That they think he has words left is lunacy.

 

   ·　 .  ✫  ·　. 

 

His parents seethe at each other with smiles on their faces. 

They go to great lengths to tell him they love him, but neither of them wants to be responsible for it, this lack of equilibrium he exhibits sometimes. It rattles around his thoughts, a not quite benevolent ghost, the muttering about a second cousin who’s a squib and the retort about that muggle on grandmother’s side who everyone said wasn’t right in the head.

Even pretends they’re not there until they go away.

 

   ·　 .  ✫  ·　. 

 

 

It might be Christmas Day.

Equally it might not be.

He’s not sure he cares, either way. 

The healers have holly pinned to their robes, toss season’s greetings around with grating joviality.

He doesn’t eat when they’re watching, won’t talk when they prod, avoids their eyes when they bob close and too friendly.

He’s not sure where it comes from, just that it’s sullen and belligerent, the impulse: he won’t do them the favour of improving, at least not where they can see.

 

   ·　 .  ✫  ·　. 

  

He has to comply to procure a favour, though.

He trades a potion for sending Isak a letter.

He tells him he wants to stop crying in meteors, he wants the bridge between them to stop flying away.

He asks Isak to tell him a story, one that’s facts and not fancy, one that explains it: how they really might be.

It comes back unopened.

“Not everyone likes to be bothered at Christmas,” the healer says, and backs away like he might scream.

 

   ·　 .  ✫  ·　. 

 

It might’ve been a day, or three, but he’s thinking of escaping, as if exhaustion isn’t making phantoms of his limbs. He drags them to scope out the corridor when the clink of teacups tells him it’s visiting, imagines bewitching the greeting witch or hiding in the statue of Janus Thickey. Only problem is, he has nowhere to go, unless he just picks somewhere random and really, truly leaves. He pauses on the threshold, halted by a voice’s familiarity. 

Professor Longbottom has a hand on Isak’s shoulder, expression fractured with too much understanding.

For a second, Even thinks Isak came for him.

But Isak pinches his lips together in an attempt at a smile, looks off to the other ward, the one which has dangled in front of Even in threat and in nightmare since he was fifteen.

He flinches back towards the bed. The ward he longed to break out of an instant ago feels like refuge in comparison.

Professor Longbottom sweeps past, unseeing.

But Isak doesn’t.

“Even? Who are you here to — ” He stops when he realises Even’s in his pyjamas with no shoes on his feet. A soft, “Oh,” pops on his mouth.

Even is caving in on himself.

He wants to cry for the release of it, or be angry at himself for letting Isak find him here, for being here to be found. But he’s out of fire and water. He’s out of everything, it seems. All he can do is slide away inside himself and let his body slip down to its knees.

 

   ·　 .  ✫  ·　. 

  

The next time he wakes up, Isak’s sitting there.

  

   ·　 .  ✫  ·　. 

 

The bed isn’t comfortable. He tosses and turns in a mockery of sleep but he’s too awake to fake it any longer. He lets his eyelids flicker open. The light stings. The ward feels like an ancient artefact on display in a glass case, like he’s peering in on humanity and wondering how it works.

“Hi,” Isak says.

Isak’s eyes are dark, his fingers hesitant as they pry Even’s away from where they’re clutching the duvet to curl them up between his palms. He leans in closer, then, dissatisfied with it, abandons the chair and climbs in with Even, lies on top of the blankets in all of his clothes.

“Hi,” he says again, as if the first one might not have counted.

He’s harder to avoid when he’s only a nose away so Even murmurs a reply. His throat’s all gravel and dry.

“How are you feeling?”

Even’s lip trembles. He swallows the shaking, but it won’t go all the way down, clings to the back of his tongue. He tries to conjure a _fine_ but can’t do it. He doesn’t want to lie to Isak. Not now. Not again. Not about this.

Isak just waits, like a barrier between him and the bustling of the witch with the sandwiches and the tea.

An age passes in each second, but it gets easier when he realises Isak’s not leaving, when he listens to Isak breathing, when he starts to accept that he’s here, scrubbing his fingers over the back of Even’s hand and just breathing breathing breathing as if there’s nowhere else, no one else, for either of them to be.

“Who?” Even says, with a glance at the doorway.

“My mother.”

“How long?”

“A while.” Isak strokes Even’s hair back from his face. “She thinks Voldemort is sending her messages.”

“He’s not, right?”

Isak looks over the top of Even’s head. “If he was, I think he’d be more direct than leaving dead flies in the kitchen window.” He looks back, nervous, touches the corner of Even’s smile. “Numbers and patterns,” he says, “theories and stories. They’re more important than me.”

Even swallows. He wants to ask if it was the war, if something happened to her, but he knows it doesn’t work like that. There’s not a _why_ for everyone, however much his parents would like there to be.

“It was you, the owl,” Isak says, and Even nods even though it wasn’t a question. “I didn’t know. What did it say?”

Even draws the letter out from under his pillow.

Isak breaks the charm as it unfolds.

He reads it a few times, and Even can’t tell what he’s thinking. Is it spinning in his head that there’s no future for them, other than a permanent bed on the Janus Thickey ward, that they’ll see each other during specified hours and only ever drink tea the trolley witch made?

Isak tucks the letter into his pocket, and when his eyes come back, something Even wrote has put them in the mood for dancing. “I can do that,” he says. He brushes his thumb over Even’s lip and nudges closer. “You’re Even. Seventh year at Hogwarts. You like potions and hate Jupiter. I’m Isak. Sixth year. I like Jupiter. And you. That’s it.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. The story of you and me.”

Even’s not sure he understands it, Isak’s way of looking at things. But he closes his eyes, falls into the plain peace of it and a different kind of sleep.

 

   ·　 .  ✫  ·　. 

 

Even comes out of his dream in stages, the clang of a trolley and a mutter and the shifting of Isak’s leg disturbing the flow of a celestial river.

Isak’s propped against the wall and reading, the letter Even wrote him ready to mark the page, sitting on his knees. He smiles at Even when he sees he’s woken, but it’s truncated by the trolley witch collecting a cup and saucer from the bedside table.

“Visiting’s over, love,” she says, as she spells the cup clean. “We’re getting ‘em ready to have their tea.”

Isak eases off the bed as she rattles her way to the doorway.

“Don’t,” Even says, pulling himself up on a fistful of Isak’s sleeve. “Don’t leave.”

“Hey,” Isak says. “I have to go home but I’m not leaving you.”

His eyes have a kindness in them Even never expected to see. He’s used to being batted off with platitudes about how they only want to help him, how he needs to stay here until he comes back to how he’s supposed to be. But there’s none of that in Isak.

“It’s like planets in the daytime. Just because you can’t see them doesn’t mean they’ve disappeared.” He must realise it’s not especially reassuring because he goes on: “When your parents come, maybe we can ask them if you can come and vis— ”

“I don’t need them to sign me out. I’m of age. Let’s just go.”

Isak looks deeply dubious.

“Isak, please.”

He doesn’t know how to say it, that there’s nothing but his madness here, that he gets trapped in it when it’s how people define him, that he doesn’t need to pour his thoughts into a pensieve and see them from outside himself in order to understand what they mean. Though his head is foggy with the sleep he’s had and yet more he still needs, he can see it quite clearly: lately he’s been caught between other people’s expectation and judgement, trying to please them to make up for a pain he never meant to cause. He’s tired of being haunted by the ghost of himself. He needs to let it free so he can actually heal. 

“I’ll get worse if I stay here.”

“Ok,” Isak says, and starts packing his things.

 

   ·　 .  ✫  ·　. 

 

The wind races off the sea and buffers the lighthouse, the waves thrashing about on the rocks down below.

Isak’s room is at the top, small and circular, with windows onto the sky and a view to rival the one from the pinnacle of the Astronomy Tower. There’s a telescope set up permanently and brass instruments that show the movement of the planets, and a couple of plants that snap for attention, like they’re applauding Isak for coming home. Isak tickles their leaves, sneaks glances at Even, still not quite trusting him to stay upright after he stumbled out of the hearth and had to cling to his arm to avoid crashing into the rug.

“Tired?” Isak says. “Or hungry?”

Even shakes his head. Although he’s both, they feel distant, as if they’re happening to his body rather than him. They gave him a potion at the hospital which hasn’t worn off yet. It’s supposed to clear his mind and steer him away from dangerous thoughts; it just makes all of him feel unpleasantly weak in the knees. 

He touches one of the tiny planets which is rotating in its own mini solar system, pushing it just off course. It rectifies itself after a moment, steadying on its axis, resuming its business as if nothing ever happened. Even smiles at it in small solidarity.

Collecting his hand, Isak steps away from the window.

“Your dad won’t mind me staying?” Even says.

“He doesn’t come up here.”

That’s not really what Even was asking, but it’s an answer in itself. 

Isak pulls him gently towards the bed, uncomplaining when Even stays in his clothes, just pulling the blankets up over them as he follows him down to the pillow. He mutters a spell to extinguish the lights. The planets emit their own tiny glows, yellow and purple and red, and they tinkle as they move above the crashing of the waves.

There’s no reason it should make Even feel safe, but it does, like this unfamiliar room was always here to wrap itself around him, anytime.

 

   ·　 .  ✫  ·　. 

 

When Sonja found out about him, she was full of questions: what can we do, how do we fix it, where is the potion that makes it dissolve? The books piled up around his bed, a prison pretending to be answers, and inside it, he shrank until he was nothing but a problem that couldn’t be solved.

Isak doesn’t ask anything.

Maybe he’s been here already.

Maybe he knows Even feels like he’s shaking, though it doesn’t show at all on the outside.

Maybe he gets it, every time Even attempts to explain it, the energy he has to endure it withers and dies.

They walk on the headland, where the wind is a wall and the sea throws itself on the cliff’s mercy. The sun’s almost setting and Isak runs through the order in which the stars will rise. He speaks like he’s not expecting a contribution, hooks his fingers into the crook of Even’s elbow, and smiles, asks only if Even wants to go back and curl up in front of the fire.

Even _floo_ s his parents and deals with their fury. Or not so much deals with, lets them know that he knows that it’s there.

They wait for the apology that’s become his tradition but he doesn’t offer it, this time. They know who he is; it’s their own fault if they’re surprised.

Isak tells Even stories, how he bought plants that eat flies for the window, thought it would help if there weren’t any signs. He rolls his eyes like he should’ve known better, at the childishness of his own mind. He glances at Even, checking he’s ok with this conversation.

Even’s just glad he doesn’t have to tell another person: no, there isn’t a cure, this mind will always be my mind.

 

   ·　 .  ✫  ·　. 

  

The train trundles beneath them, carries them away from Kings Cross, the whispers about Sonja and the scandalised chatter about how Even lost it and burnt a forest to cinders whirring with the wheels. In the retelling, he was stunned by half a dozen mediwizards and still had to be wrestled to the ground before being whisked to Azkaban and interrogated about his plans. 

He expects Isak to move away from him, use the excuse of seeing his friends, but instead, he leans in close and whispers, “Chant like you’re about to summon some kind of evil, maybe we can get a carriage to ourselves.”

Even recites some ancient Greek he memorised for no reason. He’s pretty sure it’s a recipe for stewed lentils but it clears three carriages inside a minute.

They slide the door closed on everyone and watch the scenery spin past, all cold grey and snow as they move further north, Isak’s chin on his shoulder as Even points out a landmark he knows.

He tries not to think about going back to the Ravenclaw dorm, to the lingering, distrustful spectres of his past. He’s got used to it, Isak lying next to him, the clinking of his tiny planets a salve to the panic which manifests when he thinks of anything except the here and now.

The door slides open. Sana leans on the frame, looks between them.

“Good Christmas?” she says.

“Perfect,” Isak says, and he looks at Even like they’re sharing a joke.

Even hopes he also means it. He wants to keep them forever, the days of putting himself back together, waking to Isak’s bacon sandwiches and goodnights comprised of peeling Isak’s wrinkled up socks off his toes.

He stares at the landscape, tunes out their chatter about a Herbology assignment neither of them has apparently completed.

For the first time in ages, Even thinks about Mikael. They only started talking when the others got selected for the quidditch team, had late night conversations where he laughed and confided which made Even think what he wanted was reflected. But that’s what it was, a reflection. Something of himself glimmering back.

He thinks he understands it now, how it happened, how he built himself a maze with no way out. He told himself a story with only one ending, and when that didn’t happen, it seemed the only thing to do was to write himself out.

Being around Isak made him see it; he doesn’t have to plot a future or figure things out. He doesn’t even have to have an answer for every question that might come out of someone’s mouth. He just has to accept what’s in front of him, and that includes himself. He has to stop clinging to who he thought he would be and appreciate the Even he is now. He thinks he can do it.

It’s something he’d like to try, anyhow.

When Sana’s departed, tired of Isak’s teasing, Even reaches above them into the luggage compartment for the bag he kept with him. He pulls it down, moves his jumpers aside and gives Isak the picture he bought him, in all its badly-wrapped glory. “Merry Christmas,” he says.

Isak stares at him for ages, then says, “I don’t have anything to give you.”

Even’s smile at what a ridiculous conceit that is overtakes his ability to articulate it. The things he’s given him, Isak will never know. He watches Isak unwrap the picture and his eyes go wide as he twists the frame and the nebula comes alive.

“A little bit of the sky for when you’re under the lake,” Even says, “so you don’t have to sneak up to the tower.”

Isak grabs his scarf and pulls him in. “I’m going to do that anyway.”

“Every day?”

“At least,” he says, mumbling the words into his mouth.

 

   ·　 .  ✫  ·　. 

 

He lingers so long kissing Isak goodbye-until-dinner the others have already settled into the dorm. Instead of accepting the silence when he walks in and slings his bag down, Even looks them in the eye one by one and says, “Hello.” 

Elias stops unpacking and looks to Mikael.

Mikael considers it, then says, “Hey.”

It breaks enough of the tension for Elias to return Even’s greeting.

Yousef smiles up from where he was pinning a snake pin to his sweater and adds, “Good to see you, bro.”

It doesn’t fix anything.

It doesn’t break it more either, though.

   ·　 .  ✫  ·　. 

 

They go down to dinner together, not speaking much, but a different kind of not speaking to before, perhaps.

Sonja’s at the table, chatting to Mari about someone who’s not worth it. Even doesn’t think it’s him, but she stops, anyway, as he takes a seat.

He helps himself to a roast potato from the dish at her elbow, even though there’s one closer to his own plate, trying to get enough of her attention that he can try a rueful smile and see how it fares. At first, she acts as if he’s not there, but some internal debate wars on her jaw and, after a few minutes, she turns to him with a determined face.

“Isak seems… decent,” she says. “For a Slytherin.”

He toys with the gravy. “You know the hat wanted to put _me_ in Slytherin,” he says. 

“How come you’re not, then?”

“I asked not to be. Because you were in Ravenclaw.”

He screws his mouth up to one side. It was also his family, how he panicked at the thought of their disappointment, but he wants to give her a story, one about a frightened eleven year old who saw her as a haven. He watches that new piece of the past slot into their shared memory. He wants to explain things more than he has, how she chased her dreams and it felt like flying away from him, how in the space left behind, the cracks in himself that were festering had nowhere else to go. But he’s not sure she needs or wants to hear it, so he saves it for later. Or for never. He’s getting increasingly at home with just letting things go.

Isak meets his eye, looks at the ceiling where the night sky is sprawling, and back at Even in invitation.

He leaves dinner soon after that.

 

   ·　 .  ✫  ·　. 

 

Even bounces the ball off the parapet and catches it. He squeezes it just to measure the reality of its curve before he tosses it again. It ricochets off the stone, rebounds at a shallow angle, and skids on the floor, not stopping, just robbed of enough of its momentum to spin like a planet, blurring on its axis rather than bouncing.

It stops turning when Isak reaches a toe towards it, traps it on the floor. He swings down, retrieves the ball, and comes over.

“Hey,” he says. He drops a kiss to Even’s mouth when he lifts his chin for one before he sits beside him. “How was it?”

“Ok,” Even says, and he nods, because it was. As much as it was ever going to be, anyway.

He’s tired, still, so Isak conjures a blanket and they settle, entangled, against the wall.

“Tell me a story?”

“Vega,” Isak says, breathing out, vapour from his warmth colliding with the cold air and uncurling to tickle Even’s chin, “was the pole star in ancient times and in 11,000 years or so, it’ll be it again. It was the first star photographed by muggles, the one to which all others are compared. It’s probably the most important star in the entire sky.”

_Always find Vega, then everything else slots into place._

Maybe Isak is his Vega. He loves how much Isak would hate the idea if he told him. He suppresses a smile, thinks about Altair, spinning wildly above them, gravity darkening making it imperfect, not tethered, but connected to the boldest, brightest, bluest star in the north. “Do you think Altair thinks he’s lucky?”

“They’re stars, Even,” Isak says, with a roll of his eyes. “They don’t think.”

 Right.

They’re all up there, the stars and the planets and the nebulas, beyond words, beyond time, beyond thinking.

And Even’s down here, with a boy who finds fascination and wonder in the actuality of things.

Isak settles the ball in a crevice in the blanket and Even takes his face in his hands to kiss him.

Finally Even thinks he gets it: some things don’t need stories and they don’t need explaining. They’re fine just as they are, existing quietly together for as long as they can.

 

* 　 　　 　 ✫ 　 · 　　 ˚ 　　 ˚ 　　 　 . · ✵ 　　 ·　 . 　　　　　 ⋆ ✵ . . ✺ ˚ 　. · 　 　 . 　 .  ✫ 　 · 　　 ˚ 　　 ˚ 　　 　 . · ✵ 　　 ·　 .               * 　

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to know more about the Japanese myth Even references, you can read a version [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanabata). If you want to read about the ancient Greek invisibility spell [ it's here](http://pressblog.uchicago.edu/2015/03/16/excerpt-invisible-by-philip-ball.html).
> 
> If you want to talk to me about anything, you can do it on [Tumblr](http://junkshop-disco.tumblr.com) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/junkshopdisco).


End file.
